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“Well, I can’t help it, can I?”
Xavier got up and crossed the room in four quick strides. Sofia watched expectantly as he plucked a twenty-pound note from his jacket pocket and dropped it in an empty vase at the end of the counter.
“There’s twenty in there, babe,” he told her. “Mummy’s just too beautiful. She makes me forget my language.”
Sofia just scoffed. “Daddy, that’s ridonk-u-lous. Mommy’s just Mommy. Have some self-control.”
As prim as she sounded, I had to laugh a little when she pronounced “control” without theror thel, yet managed to sound as imperious as the Queen of England herself.
“Mommy’s a princess.” Xavier slipped a hand around my waist and landed a kiss atop my head, making me glow. “And princesses make men like me act like animals.”
“When the jar fills up at home, we go to Coney Island to ride the Ferris wheel,” Sofia said as she played with a doll on the counter, apparently done with the cookies. Then she frowned, a spitting image of her father’s own scowl. “Dad, do you have a Coney Island in London?”
“No, can’t say we do,” he admitted. For a moment, Xavier looked like he wanted to whip out his phone to have his designer build one right here in the living room.
Sofia’s frown intensified. “Then what the heck are we going to do with all that money? I’m going to earn a lot from you.”
Xavier released me, swept Sofia up from her seat, and carried her to the window in an avalanche of giggles.
“Ah! Daddy! Ahh!” she squealed through her tinkling laughter.
He held her tight, turning her toward the glass. “I don’t have Coney Island, but did you see the Ferris wheel there?”
“Oooh. That’s a big one.”
“That’s the London Eye, my love,” he told her. “Tallest wheel in all of Europe. One of the biggest in the world. You can see everything from up there. You’ll forget all about Coney Island, I promise.”
Sofia’s bright blue eyes blinked furiously, and her mouth quivered. Lord, she was as mercurial as her father, going from laughter to tears in the space of a few seconds. I shook my head. How was I supposed to deal with them both?
“But I like Coney Island,” she was telling him. “I don’t want to forget it.”
Xavier slumped, obviously sensing he’d said the wrong thing. A glance at me told me I was right. I just shrugged, as if to say,your mess, your clean-up.
He turned back. “Well, no. You don’t have to forget it. All I’m saying is that we’re going to have fun. Maybe more than you’ve ever had. What do you think about that?”
Sofia examined him for a long minute, then, as if she planned it, cracked another smile. I shook my head. She knew how to milk those moods, too.
“Let’s go!” Sofia cried, flinging her arms around her father’s neck.
The tip of his long nose pinked with pleasure. Xavier smacked a kiss on her cheek, making her giggle again before releasing her to the floor. “Be good, you little terror. Els, thank you. We’ll be back late.”
“Don’t you worry about a thing, boy. She’s in good hands here. Enjoy yourselves!”
* * *
The streetlamps wereon now as twilight fell over London, but the city was still crackling with a different kind of life. This wasn’t the hurried crowds of working folks or bumbling tourists making their way through the sites. Instead, it was a mix of those, like us, who came out at night. Women in clothes made to be stared at, men with their chests puffed out like pigeons.
With the windows down, I caught the occasional peals of laughter from pubs or bits of live music dancing out of windows as we made our way through the city. It was a lot like New York that way. Always alert. Always on the move. Always singing with life, in a way.
The ride alone would have been enough for me as the car toured alongside red double-decker buses and hackney carriages. Ben took several detours so that Xavier could point out sites I was eager to find. There was the Tower Bridge. Big Ben. The Houses of Parliament. And so forth.
Soon, I had a list on my phone of too many places to see in a lifetime, much less a few months in one summer. I was jittery and babbling with plans to get to them all when the car finally stopped.
“Come on, you,” Xavier said as he helped me out and onto the sidewalk at the corner of Euston Road and what a street sign said was St. Pancras. “Text you later, Ben.”
“Right around the corner, sir.”
“I think it would take at least a full morning to tour the Tower of London, don’t you think?” I asked as he guided me down the pavement. “Then we can walk the Tower Bridge too, and maybe go across the river to explore Maltby Market. Or is that too much in one day?”
